News Comment/COMENTARI AL DIA

The PP Liquidates Catalan/ EL PP LIQUIDA EL CATALÀ

The PP Liquidates Catalan

by Josep C. Verges

Catalan donkey and Aragonese donkey or Spanish nationalist bull, doubly an ass. Below: Duran was an usher at the village cinema: “I was always called Pepito in Spanish at home. For breakfast we had bread soup and for tea bread with wine and sugar, these were our grand meals.” He explains to Spanish nationalists that poverty made him Aragonese and “not 100% Catalan.”

The PP in Aragon has decided to liquidate Catalan. Since they know that this cannot be done with an official tongue recognized by the Constitution, they will introduce legislation that simply sates Catalan does not exist in Aragon, only Eastern Aragonese. Spanish would then be Western Aragonese and by unifying both Aragonese the new official Spanish wil be born. The problem for Spanish nationalists, highlighted by the ignorant provincials of Aragon, is that Spanish does not exist. The Constitution of the State of the Autonomies only recognizes Castilian, along with Catalan, Basque and Galician, but not Spanish. Centralists translate the English Spanish into Español, like the French Canal de la Manche (Sleeve) or English Channel into Canal de la Mancha (Stain). We shall soon see Don Quixot of the Stain! The PP misses Franco and would like to do like the Fascist dictator when he banned the Statute of Catalonia: “The Constitution granted in an evil hour…”

The Aragonese have a problem since the time Spanish nationalists decided to copy the French provinces in the nineteenth century. They detached part of Catalonia to “solve the Catalan problem” by handing the Franja strip to Aragon, as they did two centuries earlier handing the Roussillon to France, which is still trying to digest it. Spaniards make such a song and dance about Gibraltar and not a word is ever said about French Catalonia! The Catalans in Aragon continue to speak Catalan and this is irritating. Aragon does not know what more to do to eliminate Catalans. Some years ago I was invited to give a lecture in Badajoz. Extremadura is so extremely isolated that the best way to travel is by car. I spoke of how governments throw away public money, giving as an example Europe’s largest damn that is completely useless. Alqueva, paid with European funds, lies over the border in Portugal so it was fine with the locals, but that didn’t stop me having to listen to the never-ending attacks on Catalans. So far away and still criticized! But they were speaking about their local Catalans (more likely Extremadura immigrants returned from Catalonia) who dominated the quality ham trade. I told my hosts that if they did not spend all day at the bar criticizing Catalans and worked like them they would be the ones to dominate the Iberian pork trade. On top I found ironic that they criticized Catalans in a Catalan-owned hotel, the best in town. On my return trip an international award-winning professor asked if I could take him to Saragossa. It wasn’t a comfortable ride because just as we entered Aragon he began to badmouth Catalans. Once again I thought he was referring to us Catalan whipping boys who pay the taxes on which Spaniards live. What an ungrateful moron, travelling for free with a Catalan and criticizing us! But, as in Extremadura, he was criticizing the Catalans of Aragon. The Aragonese hate the Catalans of the Franja even more than the Catalans in Catalonia. They work too hard and make the Aragonese look lazy in their own region. The solution: Declare by law that Catalans don’t exist. What is shameful is Duran who comes from Alcampell in the Franja. Not a day goes by without his spouts of nonsense in the media, but not a peep from him on the ethnic cleansing of his own people in the Franja. Maybe Eastern Aragonese is fine with him. Spain does not speak Spanish and Aragon does not speak Aragonese, whether Eastern or Western. The Constitution gives Spanish droit du seigneur over the other three official languages. The right to rape is not the right to assassinate. Duran does not have enough courage to defend the Franja, just as Catalan as the rest of Catalans, whatever the lies of the PP and the silences of Duran.